Shaping Matter at Nanoscale with Ions – ShaMaN

Fabrication of composite glasses (dielectric matrix containing metal nanoparticles), or meta-materials, with unique properties is one of the key issues in the field of optical devices, with applications in photonics and plasmonics. In particular, fabrication of regular arrays of morphologically shaped metal NPs is a challenge from both a technological and fundamental point of view. In this respect, the ion-beam shaping technique represents a ground-breaking and powerful tool to manipulate matter at the nanometer scale. Our project ShaMan fits into this research framework. The importance of this subject matter does not uniquely reside in its fundamental interest but also in the possibility of engineering systems containing confined nanoparticles (NPs) in configurations that are nearly impossible to obtain by other techniques. In particular, this project aims at merging concepts from various areas (nano-physics, ion-irradiation, colloidal chemistry and nanopatterning) to probe deeper the ion-shaping technique to fabricate and to optical characterize novel configurations of randomly distributed and 2D arrays of metallic NPs confined within a planar silica film. To achieve this endeavor the following tasks will be carried out: i) Synthesis of monoelemental metallic (Au, Ag) NPs and hybrid Au-Ag metallic-alloy and bi-metallic core-shell NPs followed by their subsequent incorporation into a planar silica film. Two experimental configurations will be fabricated: a) randomly distributed and b) 2D arrays of NPs. ii) Obtaining experimental knowledge about the ion-shaping mechanism iii) Optical investigation of both experimental configurations. For the randomly distributed NPs we will study the optical properties of individual ion-shaped nanostructures. For arrays of ion-tailored NPs we will investigate the optical coupling among the ion-shaped NPs by varying both array and NP features.